HOSPITALS

I have just come back from visiting my Mum in hospital in the U.K. Fortunately for me, I have only rarely been in hospital during my life. Once, when I had my tonsils and adenoids out as a child; and once, in 2004, when I broke my arm in a cycling accident. I remember the latter, since it happened during the Barcelona Olympics, and I could watch sport all day on the TV.

What struck me this time was how complex an organisation a modern hospital is. The main hospital in Derby, where she was being treated, is new and vast, the size of a modern airport. There are endless corridors and lifts and stairs and parking areas and shops; and so on and so forth.

The ward she was in had 28 beds. Those 28 people were looked after by at least that number. Not just doctors and nurses, but physiotherapists, occupational therapists, cleaners, caterers, quality control executives, porters, psychologists and volunteers. And others whose job I couldn't work out. All seemed to spend vast amounts of time writing things down in files, meaning, in turn, that they actually spent very little time talking to my Mum.

They say that there is a very strong correlation between the amount of care and attention you get in hospital and the speed with which you get out of it. Given that, the trend in modern public life, whereby you have to write down and justify everything you have done, seems a bit self-defeating.

Walter Blotscher